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Continuous analog comparator, 1mV resolution
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efabless/sky130_ef_ip__ccomp3v
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3.3V Continuous comparator with rail-to-rail operation and 1mV resolution ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Design is a basic amplifier followed by a buffer (non-latching) To make it rail-to-rail operation, two things were done: (1) Use wide range (2-stage) amplifiers. This yields expanded range at the expense of gain. (2) Wide range amplifiers still fail when the input voltage common mode goes below the common voltage of the differential pair. To avoid this, two amplifiers were made, one with nFET inputs, and one with pFET inputs. The outputs are combined. That design went to tapeout on CI2304 (Blizzard, user project for Caravel). Upon measuring silicon, it was discovered that the upper range (above about 2.7V), where the pFET amplifier stops working and the nFET amplifier takes over, has a different offset, which translates to a jog in the ADC output. This effect was analyized on 12/21/2023 and found to exist in simulation. The error is a combination of several causes, but the upshot is that correcting requires the following additional design steps: (1) Increase overall current bias. The original current was set at ~40uA, so this was increased to 80uA (resistor changed from 200 squares to 100). (Note that the current bias generator and the comparator have no enable input, which they need. This has not been done yet). This corrects a problem with a slow response and increases the response time to < 1us for 1MHz operation. (2) Cascode the current sources. A reasonable approach is for the cascode transistor to take the opposite bias (e.g., VBP for the cascode to the transistor gated by VBN), and then adjust the length of the cascode to match the pFET and nFET amplifiers. The cascode prevents the bias current from changing as much due to the common voltage of the differential pair. (3) Cascode the nFET output transistor; like the current source cascodes, gate with VBP and adjust length as necessary to match the nFET and pFET amplifiers. The cascode adjusts for differences in output gain between the nFET and pFET amplifiers. (4) The pFET mirror for generating VBP was adjusted Specifically, the testbench ran three different common mode voltages at 0, 1.65, and 3.3V. The cascodes were adjusted until the amplifier(s) output was approximately the same magnitude and offset for all three common mode voltages. (5) The output voltage comes out centered a bit high, so the pFET of the first inverter was increased in size (W/L) to center it on the response. (6) Because the output inverter increased the capacitance and lessened the amplitude of the amplifier output, the output transistor sizes of both the nFET and pFET amplifiers was increased to recover a decent amount of amplitude for a 1mV input differential. The current design in simulation has a constant response across all common mode voltages from 0 to 3.3V and will toggle on an input difference of 1mV.
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Continuous analog comparator, 1mV resolution
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